Classic Pond Yachts
Classic Pond Yachts
Onward. a Bill Daniels 10 rater from 1913
Another Beale Park purchase from the Richard Howard collection, she is a replica of Bill Daniels Onward 10 rater design. The hull is beautifully built, the planking has been done very carefully, the way the planks are fitted against the keel and centerline timbers is very impressive, the only word is beautiful ! Bill Daniels made his name with the 10 rater XPDNC (Expediency) which he designed in 1906, she won everything he entered with her, I have a scaled down 2.5 rater XPDNC which will arrive on these pages soon. Bill did a development of his XPDNC with was Onward, which was similarly successful. He built a full size version which he raced -
Above the drawings for Onward and a page from the USVMYG newsletter with some pictures of the full size Onward being built. H B Tucker who wrote Model Sailing Craft with Bill, and several other books first met Bill while Onward was being lowered out of his workshop onto the waiting horse drawn cart.
I had no idea who any of these guys were, or what a XPDNC was when I first saw Onward at Beale Park, I just loved the way the hull was built, and the lines of the boat, she was cutter rigged when I bought her, the sails were made out of curtain material, she was intended to be radio controlled, but the winch was not installed, there was a rudder servo, and sheeting line guides fitted, I thought she would look great sailing so bought her.
This is Onward at Beale park, with my wife, who was still not sure a day out buying model yachts was really that much fun! As can be seen the rig on Onward was not as the drawings above. But the biggest job was trying to fit the sail winch into the boat, the hatch is very small, and the winch had to go out on the port side to line up with the line guides, all very tight. In the end I used some carbon sheet and made a servo tray holder, the idea was to make up a holder which bolted under the deck, the winch fitted into a piece of carbon sheet which would slide into the holder once the drum was rigged, it was every bit as fiddly to do as it sounds, but works, sadly no pictures of how it was done, because I did not know then I was going to make a web site, not surprising as I had no idea how you build websites, still struggling now! some pictures of the finished system.
The rudder servo was fitted, but I changed it for a digital one, fitted a new tiller arm and connectors, the hatch is not waterproof, so I have a waterproof servo to fit. One of the problems with fitting radio in vintage type models, is the boats are just not watertight!! the rudder stock sticks through the hatch and has a Brain quadrant fitted, for show.
This is a lot tighter than it looks! the screw you can see locks the servo tray in place, remove the screw and the tray slides aft with the winch, we can then get to the sheeting lines, just!
Here the tray has been unlocked and can now slide aft to come out of the holder, or it just gives access to the screw holding the drum. The plastic box behind is one of my old plastic business card boxes, it is now the battery holder, I have cut away the back of the top, so it just slides out to give access to the battery.
The cut out around the hatch needs to be tidied up, I will fit some thin veneer over the end grain, the opening is tight enough already, so I don't want to make it smaller. You can see in the pictures that the deck is planked as well, she is ship planked (planks in straight lines, not swept) onto a ply base, the deck beams seem to be let into the ply base, which is unusual as it will take away a lot of the strength, but the deck has been made off the boat, glassed over under the deck and screwed to the boat.
I don't think the boat had ever been in the water when I bought her, she had no sheeting that would work, no electrics that worked and was not set up for Braine steering. But she had been moved around here and there and there was some superficial damage to the varnish, I did not want to put her in the water and get water into the planking, so I sanded her back and built up several coats of gloss varnish, then added matting additive to the gloss varnish and put on a final coat with a satin finish as she was when I bought her.
The picture above left is the other reason I am sure she has not been in the water, she has a deck stepped mast, with no mast support under the deck, and the rigging bases were level with the mast, the deck flexed badly if you put any weight on it, so if she had gone sailing the mast would have flexed the deck, allowing the shrouds to go slack and then it would have gone over the side, nothing holding the mast aft, taking the deck with it, because the mast sits in a solid brass tube fitted into the deck slide. There is minimal access inside the boat, so I removed the deck slide, drilled and tapped a hole in the deck to take an 8mm bolt, as near as I could directly over a keel bolt, I drilled a 6mm hole through the bottom half of the bolt, the bolt went through the deck, I put a penny washer and nut over the bolt, just! and wound the bolt through the nut and allowed it to slide over the top of the keel bolt up against the keel bolt nut, the bolt was cut to be flush with the deck, I could just get under the deck to tighten the nut up to the underside of the deck, then refitted the mast slide, now solid. The picture on the right is looking aft, the plastic is the bottom of the battery box, the Tufnell rod is supporting the aft end of the box, everything about getting this boat sailing was hard!
I made up a Braine quadrant, as the rudder stock is at a slight angle the tube that goes over the rudder stock has been soldered in at a slight angle.
Once I found the drawings of the boat above, I wanted to put the original rig into the boat, the drawings above show a short bowsprit, but the forestay does not go to the bowsprit. In Bill Daniels book Model Sailing Craft he show's how to fit spring loaded bowsprits to avoid damage when hitting banks, and other boasts, I think that it why it is there. The picture on the right is the only picture I have found of Onward, it is from Edward Hobbs book Model Sailing Boats from 1928, no bowsprit. So I had sails made to the original sizes by Cat sails, or at least as close as I could by trying to scale of the available images, the gaff is possibly a little short. My next problem is there was no forestay fitting in the foredeck and no access at all.
I wanted to put the boat back as Daniels designed her, but there was no forestay fitting, and no deck beam nearby, after much thinking I realised that the centerline timbers were substantial, also the hull was only about 3 inches deep where the forestay needed to go. I drilled a 6mm hole through the deck where the forestay was going to go, I measured down from the deck to the centerline timber and I was only 65mm, I got a long series drill and drilled a pilot hole into the centerline timber, I took a number 8 brass wood screw and machined off the head on the lathe, and turned down the shank to clean up. I took an 8mm dia length of brass rod and bored out one end to take the brass screw, I turned the 8mm dia down to 6mm to fit the deck, I allowed for the screw to go into the timber 20mm, I then cut off the bar and machined the head into an eye, picture above left. I then silver soldered the brass screw into the brass rod, I put a brass penny washer under the eye and screwed the eye into the boat, sealing with silicon.
I had to make a new jib boom and fittings, this is the ferrule on the forward end of the boom to take the jib luff and forestays, cut out of flat sheet formed into the taper, then silver soldered together along with with the upright to take rigging. The wire coming out of the end is a counterbalance, a modern tweek, Bill would have fitted one these days!!
I used the original mast band, but as she has a deck stepped mast, and very little sweepback to the rigging bases, when I worked out the center of effort of the rig, I realised I needed to move the mast forward, also scaling off the drawings above, it looked like the mast needed to go forward, this had the effect of giving some aft support to the rig, but the loads could be quite high, so I have used wire rigging, and fitted a forestay fitting to the mast under the mast band to stop it sliding down.
Outhaul adjustment for main and jib, and gaff.
The new rig layout meant the gaff jaws were at the wrong angle, I de-soldered the jaws cleaned them up, altered the angle and re-soldered them together, I drilled some small holes and stitched in some leather hide to protect the mast varnish.
New Dacron sails by Cat Sails bent on. To get the sheeting to work using the sheet horses, I had to rig the mainsheet through a reverse purchase, I tied the end of the mainsheet to the mainsheet horse car, it goes through a block on the end of the boom, runs along under the boom through brass eyes, to a block by the kicking strap ( more on that kicker next!) then to a block by the mast step, forward to a turning block then aft and through a block fitted to the sheeting line, then forward and the bitter end loops over a brass eye with the eye opened slightly, so as the winch pulls the sheet in it pulls the block, so the mainsheet goes twice as far as the winch pulls the sheeting line, this allows the sail to go all the way out, the winch I am using is the same as on my Radio A class and is very strong, also very unlikely we will take this boat out sailing in a gale of wind. The jib sheet connects to the becket on the block the mainsheet runs through so only moves half as far as the main, which fortunately is about right!!
You can see in the pictures that I have a kicking strap, my excuse is 'it was on the boat when I bought her' I believe the first kickers were fitted to 10 raters, but maybe not this early, the kicker is not very powerful and does allow the boom to lift, but it does help hold the boom down downwind, a bit!
Onward rigged in the garden, the closest to sailing we get at the moment, but some pictures below of when I did get a single chance to sail here at Gosport last summer.
I may have to move the mast further forward, she was carrying too much weather helm, but it was very light, Cat Sails sails are lovely, she slipped along in almost no wind, barely disturbing the water, I will have a lot of fun with this boat, may fit a jackyard topsail !!!
To celebrate the 100 anniversary of Walpole Park where Gosport Model Yacht Club lives, we took some old style Models to sail, as it was also the first day of the Vane A class nationals we only sailed them while the A class were stopped for lunch, fortunately a club member took some nice pictures of my Wampum and Onward, below. A bit more wind, the mast does need to be moved forward, too much weather helm!
Classic Pond Yachts